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When the heat becomes too oppressive in Miami, Florida, and shelters are filled, it’s not uncommon to find clusters of unhoused people taking refuge and finding shade under park trees, highways, bridges, and any other urban overhangs that might provide temporary relief.
But recently, these kinds of gatherings—even to avoid the city’s humid conditions—are few and far between. Under new state law HB 1365, which took effect in October, local authorities now have the power to issue fines, make arrests, and remove homeless individuals found loitering or camping in public spaces. And, starting in 2025, local residents and business owners will also be allowed to sue government municipalities throughout Florida that don’t comply with the ban.
“Florida will not allow homeless encampments to intrude on its citizens or undermine their quality of life like we see in states like New York and California,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said last March after signing the bill into law.
Though advocates believe it will encourage people to look for shelter and leave the street, critics suggest the measure does nothing to address the root causes of homelessness and will have fiscal consequences for cities intent on filling jail cells each night. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that such a significant effort has been made to clear the streets and the parks,” says Ron Book, Chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. “But how you go about that, putting people in jail, I don’t really believe gets you where you want to be.”
The law comes just a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a local ban on outdoor sleeping in Grants Pass, Oregon, effectively allowing cities and states to utilize law enforcement to respond to growing homeless populations and encampments if they so choose. “Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.
With federal allowance, city leaders in other states like Texas, California, and Massachusetts are now burdened with the nuances of enforcing their state’s camping laws, all while attempting to allocate proper resources and address humanitarian concerns for their homeless populations. The process has been tricky and full of logistical and ethical challenges.
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“I think that communities are really trying to think about the laws that have been passed and how we mitigate harm as much as possible for the people that they’re trying to serve,” says Marcy Thompson, vice president of programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “Are there things that they can put into place from a policy or state legislative perspective to counteract some of that?”
While some cities are grappling with enforcement for the first time, David Gray, Austin’s Homeless Strategy Officer, has been addressing encampment concerns since 2021, when the Texas capital made it a criminal offense for anyone to sit, lie down, or camp in public areas. According to the ordinance, violations of the law result in fines of no more than $500 and are classified as misdemeanors, meaning no jail time is required. Those living in encampments are only arrested when they refuse to vacate areas that have been deemed dangerous for the public (flood-prone or beside busy roadways).
“Our approach in Austin tries to lead with compassion and safety,” Gray says. “When a resident or a business owner calls about a homeless encampment or a person laying on a sidewalk, most of the time, our office will be the initial point of contact, and we’ll triage that call—we’ll try to evaluate the conditions around the encampment, or if it’s just a person, we’ll see how we can quickly serve that person and get them moving.”
In September, Gray’s team helped relocate 95 unhoused residents from various encampments to shelters, removing over 40,000 pounds of trash and debris from the impacted areas. For bigger projects that take place near parks and trails, Gray relies on a program called HEAL (Housing-focused Encampment Assistance Link) that gives individuals in large encampments a 72-hour window to pack up before the city clears out their belongings. At its core, the program makes sure to keep families and encampment members together when they’re moved to one of HEAL’s two designated shelters.
“By moving the whole encampment into a shelter at one time, it allows you to retain their social network and their relationships,” Gray says. “Typically 80 to 85 percent of people at an encampment accept our offer to come into shelter, and of those, we’ve seen 50 to 60 percent successfully transition out of shelter into housing.”
The biggest challenge? The lack of available shelters. Gray says the city has one shelter bed for every five unhoused individuals, a ratio he hopes to see improve for Austin’s estimated 5,530 unsheltered homeless population. Last year, the city opened a 300-bed shelter and worked with Travis County community partners, non-profits, and developers to build 1,200 new units of permanent supportive housing to be finished by the end of 2027.
“We do a lot of that work of educating people about the system needs and then helping bring together the various funders and partners to deliver on the infrastructure,” Gray says. “We go to work once people are in alignment and in agreement, and we have the opportunities to make it happen.”
In Miami-Dade County, Book has been attempting to tackle the same housing issues, especially now that more authorities and residents are proactive about citing violations and making arrests. In the latest homeless population count, the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust found that 1,004 unhoused people were living in the county and that at least 1,000 housing units were needed to adapt to the new camping law. “We’re aggressively creating more shelter opportunities,” Book says. “We’re aggressively looking to buy more residential buildings or commercial or retail buildings that we can use adaptive reuse, as we’ve already done, to create new permanent supportive housing.”
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In addition to converting specific hotels and juvenile detention facilities, Book has invested in a navigation center, a building that has a lower barrier for entry than a typical shelter and can’t be classified as an encampment because of its indoor nature. With Miami’s high rents and limited affordable housing, Book hopes some of these low-barrier shelters can serve as a bridge to more permanent housing. “We’re connecting law enforcement with the right outreach teams in the right areas to maximize placing people into shelter and housing quickly,” he says.
Though not every city has the kind of infrastructure or plans that Miami and Austin have started implementing and working towards, many are attempting to mitigate camping bans while still honoring their citizens’ calls for better public safety. In Lowell, Mass., bans on encampments are only enforced when the city has available emergency shelter space, and authorities are also required to offer shelter and transportation to shelters for anyone removed as part of the ban.
Thompson acknowledges the pressures that many leaders face in this crisis, especially because “scaling up housing, scaling up services and healthcare, and all those things are not overnight solutions,” she says. In the meantime, there are other ways to make a difference in homeless communities, like creating safe parking sites (in which unhoused individuals can sleep in their cars in designated parking lots) or calling on sanitation services to address public health concerns. “There are other mechanisms that communities are trying to consider on how we keep people safe today while working towards those more permanent solutions,” Thompson says.
That echoes what Gray believes will be key for cities navigating these challenging decisions to keep streets and homeless populations safe. As he attempts to push policy and address root causes, he suggests delivering “quick wins” with individuals who can be helped efficiently and put on sustainable paths.
“I have this conversation with my peers and other cities and I try to remind them to stay grounded,” he says. “What we do is never going to be seen as good enough by somebody, and so I think it’s just important to stay grounded and stay focused on keeping the main thing the main thing, which is what is in the best interest of the clients.”
